{"title":"The False Promises of Sovereignty","authors":"Joyce Dalsheim","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190680251.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190680251.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The last chapter showed how struggles to be Jewish in Israel seem like a narrowing maze with no exit. This chapter considers the nature of that maze. It focuses on two cases of observant Jewish Israelis who come into conflict with the state over what it means to live according to their understandings of Jewishness. It shows that what appears as a religious-secular divide is far more complex. It is sometimes a religious-religious divide and is always part of a process of producing a national majority of sovereign citizens through disaggregation and conflation of modern categories of identity—religion and nation. Framed with Kafka’s “City Coat of Arms,” it shows how alliances of convenience can undermine political positions, in this case strengthening nationalism and territorial expansion at the expense of traditional Judaism.","PeriodicalId":411260,"journal":{"name":"Israel Has a Jewish Problem","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132073460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Elimination","authors":"Joyce Dalsheim","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv5zftbj.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv5zftbj.15","url":null,"abstract":"Hannah Arendt wrote that “emancipation” of the European Jews should have been their admission into humanity as Jews. But attempts at assimilation actually made their future more precarious. They seemed to become part of European society but were neither admitted into society nor, indeed, into humanity. This chapter argues that assimilation does not end when Jews become sovereign citizens of their own state. Expanding on Patrick Wolfe’s theorizing on assimilation, it argues that self-determination in the Jewish state is also a form of self-elimination. Zionism is the ultimate Kafkaesque attempt at assimilation, an attempt to gain acceptance by mimicking those by whom one has been oppressed. The modern state was supposed to create the conditions in which Jews could flourish “as Jews.” Yet, because of the conflation of “religion” and “nation” in the figure of the Jew, the modern state actually limits the possible ways of being Jewish.","PeriodicalId":411260,"journal":{"name":"Israel Has a Jewish Problem","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130054916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}